Alston Film : a lovely record of the Praxinoscope workshop

https://vimeo.com/149344544

Click on the link above to see how the good folk of Alston and the surrounding area dealt with the technical challenges of the Praxinoscope workshop.

The last workshop: Victorian moving images

Saturday 28th November 2015 saw Mair and Bridget come together once again for the last Connecting Killhope workshop.

Despite a tricky weather forecast the intrepid creative folks of the Alston area made their way to The Brewery in Alston for a day of creative challenge. The Brewery is a set of buildings containing potters' studios as well as a very well equipped room for hire.

Bridget and Mair worked with Alston Moor Film in order to find people who would be interested in this workshop. Alston Moor Film also did what you might expect of them and filmed the workshop. Look out for a link to the film on this blog.

But for the meantime here are some photos of the workshop participants getting to grips with hope to create a set of images for the Praxinoscope.

Save the Date!

We've set the date and times for our final set of workshops. 

E-mail us at connectingkillhope@gmail.com to sign up!

Coming this Autumn...... workshops in Alston with Alston Moor Film!

The next set of workshops...

There is one group left to work with on Connecting Killhope and that's Alston Moor Film over in Cumbria.

 Although we haven't actually done any workshops with them yet we wanted to represent them in the yurt so we had a film that the group had made showing......

and some Praxinoscope images as these will be the focus of this last set of workshops. 

So, although it is Goodbye (for now) to Stanhope Youth Group and High Forest Arts (Sinderhope) watch this space for more news about Connecting Killhope over in Cumbria.

Party Time in the Yurt Village!

Time to celebrate and reflect on the Connecting Killhope workshops undertaken so far.................

During a classic Killhope summer's day (drizzle and midges) 18 intrepid visitors made it up to the yurt village to see what has been created during the project.

Participants from both the Sinderhope "Life in the Landscape" and the Stanhope "Being Underground" workshops came along, plus a handful of curious museum visitors. We were very happy to see everyone and to share the fruits of the workshops.

There was quite a lot of stuff packed into Lapwing yurt. Still Life drawings from Sinderhope, alongside portraits from Stanhope

A slide show of all the project activities to date.

In fact it was pretty jam packed with art but there was always room for people to sit chat and munch on their lunch....

Or do a bit of networking.....

Come and Celebrate with Us!

It's party time! We are going to put up a display of the work that has been done with our first two groups. Plus there will be a film screening from Alston Film Club, the next group we are going to work with. 

Please come along and have a look. If you want to make a day of it and look round the museum normal admission charges will apply but.... kids go free in June!

We will be up in the yurt village from 11:30 am til 2:30pm, just ask at reception or follow the balloons to find us.

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday 20th June.

first and second breakfast!

After the campfire we showed a movie in the big yurt and then it was time for the kids to head off to their yurts for bed. As you might imagine there wasn't a great deal of sleeping going on, so by 06:30 am it was time for first breakfast!

Everyone pitched in with the big clear up and then we took all the gear down to the museum.

 A bit of morning exercise before a bacon buttie in the cafe.

After an action packed time it was no wonder some people were starting run low on energy, but we all had a great time. A huge thanks to the volunteers from the youth group without whom this could not have happened. Thanks also to Pip and Millie for opening up early and providing us with the breakfast that saw us through the morning. And last but not least thanks to WAAP for providing the extra funding to cover this over night stay.

Campfire capers

Although the weather wasn't ideal, we headed up to the woods for our pudding...fire popped popcorn and toasted marshmallows.. worth getting a little damp for.

Perfect popping temperature!

Nicola, our marshmallow queen...

Time to eat!

It's hungry work walking round those woods.. our young teenage helpers enjoy a well earned burger.

As do the younger members of the group.

Construction of Memory Sticks

Once the whole group was back from the walks is was time to get creative... feathers, fabric, pine cones, lichen whatever had been collected from the woods was attached to the sticks. Then the sticks were decorated with special glow in the dark paint and left to dry ready for the mine trip the next day.

The finished products.

Clue Trail and Memory Stick Walk: Yurt Stayover

Finally the day arrived and after much planing and excitement a group of 14 young people arrived at Killhope for a sleepover in the yurts.

Mair and I had planned a couple of walks around the site to get them thinking about and looking at the place they were going to call home for the next 36 hours.

The group split into two, boys in one, girls in the other (a natural and comfortable dynamic). One group started with a walk in the woods hunting for objects to include in a memory stick that would be constructed in the yurt later. Whilst the other group headed off on a pre prepared Clue Trail.

Above are the girls trying to follow a fiendish clue about a diamond shaped hole.... 

Returning to base camp with sticks at the ready.

The boys at the end of the Clue Trail!

The Adventurers!

There are many more photos from our fantastic adventure at Killhope but I couldn't resist posting this one straight away. This was after our "glow in the dark sticks" mine trip on the Saturday morning, believe me those sticks really, really glowed!

In Stanhope with the St Thomas's Youth Group 28th April 2015

Twelve young people and four volunteers explored new ways of drawing with Bridget. First they drew portraits of each other onto Perspex sheets.....then they presented their drawings to each other and said a little bit about their sitter and his or her unique qualities.

Next they were each given a magic pen to work with that only showed up under UV light, luckily the pen lid had a mini UV light in it. They wrote secret messages and decorated over these messages with drawing traced through carbon paper. 

The session seemed to fly by and several participants took extra paper home to carry on with the new technique.

Getting creative in the Yurts with Stanhope Youth Group

After warming up in the cosy big Lapwing Yurt the members of Stanhope Youth Group were ready to get creative....

Mair and Bridget had set up the yurts with various weird and wonderful contraptions, here is what it looked like before the creative chaos began....

Tentatively the budding young artists explored the drawing tools that were on hand...

And then the fun began.....the young people began to make their mark on the communal drawing wall using the drawing tools provided as well as making their own..

A particularly fine sculptural head dress / drawing tool!

It was lovely to see groups working together, discussing and thinking through ideas, problem solving, but above all having fun..

Its amazing what you can do with some string, a pulley and some paint...

And then the sun came out and we moved outside for a finale performance of a rather explosive nature!!

A huge thank you to the volunteers who accompanied the young people on this splendid day and to Killhope for being so generous in providing the beautiful Lapwing yurt for us to use as our communal studio. We would also like to say thank you to Weardale Area Action Partnership for their generous support and last but not least the young people who came along and made it such a wonderful day of discovery and colourful fun.....................